We wanted to reduce the incidence of peer bullying in our school, prevent school drop-outs, reduce aggressive behaviour and improve attendance .A key objective for our school was to introduce specific strategies and measures to prevent peer violence. We wanted to obtain valuable knowledge and skills that would enable the project participants to counter this problem effectively, through cooperation with European training centres. We used sport as our main tool, with a view to introducing effective sports techniques, which were a key element in the prevention of negative phenomena. Through the collaboration, we wanted to learn about how healthy lifestyle programmes are developed and implemented in other countries, and then create a similar programme to be incorporated into our school prevention programme to be implemented in the years following the project. We planned to use sports techniques related to prevention programmes used in European countries, using competition and team games as tools to promote healthy lifestyles.
Our school Zespół Szkół Technicznych is located in the centre of a city of 140,000 inhabitants, situated in the heart of the Rybnik Industrial District. Pupils of our school are young people aged 14 to 18 coming from very different backgrounds, from different parts of the city and neighbouring towns, often small ones. This makes our school a kind of cultural melting pot where different habits and influences from different places come together. This situation is often the cause of misunderstandings and conflicts between pupils, often based on their origin. The low socio-economic status and low level of consciousness of the youth and the violent incidents that take place in our school are mixed together. Violence and delinquency occur for a variety of reasons, including overcrowded school corridors. Therefore, the learning outcomes are also below expectations. The low socio-economic status and low level of awareness of the pupils are the cause of peer violence and conflicts between pupils. For these reasons, it was necessary to take measures to remove the problems that arise, leading to an improvement in the quality of teaching in our school.